Quick Reaction: Cavaliers 128, Raptors 110; Cavaliers lead series 2-0

He played 12 minutes tonight, was healthy, and wasn’t in foul trouble, and it still felt like too many. Ibaka grabbed some rebounds, and gave the Raptors nothing aside from that. Looked lost at times with awful turnovers, and the Cavaliers hid Kyle Korver on him on defense, because they knew they could get away with it, while the Raptors had him guarding JR Smith because they can’t afford him guarding LeBron.

If there’s a bright spot, this man is it. OG still has competed his ass off in this series, and is the one defender LeBron seems to actually care about. He’s just 20 and a rookie too, so the future is bright.

Jonas was fine. Better than that, even, offensively. He has defensive limitations, and is being used really badly for the most part in this series. Needs to play more when the Cavaliers use Tristan Thompson.

Lowry was awesome offensively in the first half. Looked like he was on the way to a huge game, scoring at will, running a great offense. Unfortunately, the wheels fell off and he didn’t have enough in the tank, combined with some brutal calls to get him in foul trouble.

I’m going to be honest, I’m tired of writing the same thing for DeMar here. Great offensively getting his own shots off and attacking the rim, solid passing, but the problems defensively start with him. The scheme has to be constantly adjusting to the ways opponents attack him, and that cascades down against great teams. Tonight he was on George Hill, which meant the Raptors were choosing several other mismatches to keep him away from Korver.

It’s not CJ’s fault that he was matched up with Kevin Love, who he clearly can’t guard. But that matchup was a mess in the third quarter and contributed to the problems in this game. Shot well, the team didn’t run enough to try to get him open while he was out there.

The gameplan just isn’t there. Where were the adjustments? And showed signs of clearly panicking in the third quarter, just throwing lineups out there in the hopes that something would help, as the game continually got more out of hand.

Things We Saw

This felt like the end of something, in a way. This year was supposed to be different, but this didn’t feel different it felt like somewhere we’ve already been, and that hurts. Brutal loss because of what it says about this team.

There were definitely some tough, suspect calls by the refs. But the Raptors lost this game, the refs didn’t.

The Raptors have some serious soul searching to do before Saturday if they want this to not end just as brutally as tonight did. Need to find some answers.